By Hannah Torregoza  The Commission on Audit (COA) and the Civil Service Commission (CSC) have agreed to continue paying for the salaries of Metro Manila-based contractuals working in the govern­ment, Senator Joel Villanueva said. Sen. Joel Villanueva
(Senate of the Philippines / FILE PHOTO / MANILA BULLETIN) Villanueva, who chairs the Senate Committee on Labor, Employment, and Human Resources, said the COA and the CSC are finalizing the details of the resolution, which he had pro­posed. The continued pay for state con­tractual employees will help them cope with everyday expenses while Metro Manila is under a community quaran­tine, which the government imposed to stop the spread of the COVID-19. The resolution will cover 100,000 contractual workers categorized as either job order or contract of service, according to the senator. “We are grateful to our gov­ernment for considering our proposal for job order or contract of service workers in government to still be paid while work in parts of the government remain sus­pended to prevent spreading the risk of our people from getting infected by COVID-19,” Villan­ueva said. Villanueva said this will also complement the existing work-from-home (WFH) arrangement that government offices will implement while Metro Manila is under community quarantine. Villanueva said the CSC and COA will jointly issue guidelines covering the payment of work­ers under job order and contract of service categories. CSC data shows there are nearly 670,000 contractual workers in government that are under either job order or contract of service categories as of May, 2019. Some 110,000 of government contractual workers are in the National Capital Region (NCR) where a community quarantine is being implemented from March 15 to April 14, 2020. Villanueva pointed out that while the government ordered that a skeletal staffing be implemented in government offices to ensure that services remain unimpeded, the income of daily-paid workers will shrink significantly to the point that they may not be able to provide for their families. “We hope our CSC and COA officials are able to finalize the guidelines by Monday so that we can ease the concern of our govern­ment contractual workers and focus our attention and effort on other problems our country is facing, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Villanueva said.